


Willa loves her family

by Himrqwerty



Category: The Finder (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, The ending of The Finder is BAD, Walter makes some mistakes, We're gonna pretend that the gang is still together but Willa's family has VANISHED, except Timo, he's chill, we forgive him though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 08:08:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himrqwerty/pseuds/Himrqwerty
Summary: The ending of the Finder is bad. Here is a better one.Or:Let's say that Uncle Shad let the wedding dissolve and let Willa live her life at the Ends of the Earth. Here is what might happen.Or:Walter and Leo are better parents than they thought.





	Willa loves her family

Willa loves her family. Well, she loves Timo. And her mom. But the rest of them... They’ve never been close. Willa is a little too far off for most of them to swallow. Not gypsy enough. Some of them called her _gaje_ behind her back.

But they were hers, or they were for sixteen years until she got torn away from her mom and thrown in with these two dudes — Leo and Walter. They are insufferable. Leo wants to better her, or something, make her see the difference between right and wrong. Walter is just an ass. He’s crazy, obsessed with finding things and it’s irritating to no end. She works for minimum wage, cleaning tables and hating everything.

It’s a living.

Her PO is worse than both of them combined, somehow. She’d take Leo’s unrelenting optimism or Walter’s unstoppable realism (only in regards to her, it seems) before she’d take the bitch’s resigned disinterest and pessimism.

For a girl who claims to not care about what other people think, her PO’s negative view of her hurt a whole lot.

But, somehow, over time, the Ends of the Earth grows on her. At first, she just likes correcting people about the name. It’s fun to be so innocently irritating. After that, she has this gross heart-to-heart with Isabel, and suddenly they have a... understanding. Then, she has a hard time nipping the whole Honor Jar. She’s somehow started to gain some respect for the two men looking after her.

They are an odd combination, but they balance each other out. Walter’s realism makes Leo’s optimism less obnoxious, and Leo’s optimism takes the harsh edge off of Walter’s disinterest in Willa changing anything about herself. If she didn’t know better, Willa would think that Walter thought she was a lost cause.

In reality, though, Walter thought she didn’t need changing. He thought Willa was great the way she came — thieving, lying, untrustworthy, and loyal.

She’s pretty sure that’s the real reason she can no longer bring herself to nip money from the Honor Jar. Uncle Shad would be horrified.

This delicate balance is what makes Willa change just a little. She still has a thieving nature, but she doesn’t jump into it as quickly. She stops, listens to Leo, listens to Walter, occasionally listens to Isabel, and comes to her own conclusions. She knows when she does something ‘wrong’ (usually with Walter, much to Leo’s disdain) and accepts the consequences if they follow.

Uncle Shad would disown her.

Willa wakes up one day and is excited about her life. She’s had a breakthrough about a case overnight — that was an odd dream — and she can’t wait to tell Walter. She hurriedly gets dressed and runs into the bar, bumping into two paying customers before she finds him.

She explains her thought process using two salt shakers and an empty bottle of Jack. When she finishes, Walter is looking at her with an odd expression and walks out. She calls after him, wondering what she did wrong. She looks at her set up, reviews her findings, and can’t find anything. She adjusts some of her assumptions and redoes the Walter math, but it’s still right. Why was he mad if she was right? She’s close to tearing her hair out when Leo walks in.

He gathers her up in his huge arms and gives her the best hug ever. He doesn’t say anything.

Everyone who loves Walter knows that he hurts them, sometimes on accident, sometimes not. Sometimes he has a ‘reason’, and sometimes he doesn’t.

Leo knows that no words can soothe this kind of hurt. Only Walter returning can do that. So in the meantime, he tries to hold her together gently.

She waits three days, biting her nails and keeping the bar spotless.

No one touches the contraption she’s set up in the kitchen, and no one says anything when some things get adjusted.

Leo spends lots of time in his office, making phone calls and talking about legal things. Willa gets bored and can’t bring herself to focus on eavesdropping when she’s too busy waiting for Walter, looking anxiously at the windows.

It’s a Tuesday when he comes home, looking perfectly fine and smug like he just found something really tricky. Willa is relieved, so relieved she isn’t even mad until Walter brushes past her without any acknowledgment and strolls into Leo’s office, shutting the door in her face without regard to her complaints.

It’s not surprising, which maybe hurts the most.

God, Uncle Shad should hate her.

She tries to listen in to their conversation, but Leo has turned to legal jargon and she returns to the bar to see if she can make herself steal from the man who’s hurting her.

She can’t.

Now that Walter is home, she feels a terrible need to destroy her map in the kitchen. She doesn’t want him to see it. Doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she craves his approval.

She’s breaking paint sticks when he walks in, not sparing the destruction a second glance. She doesn’t know if she’s grateful.

She also doesn’t know she’s crying until Walter whispers a quiet apology. She presses her lips together and shakes her head, once, twice, three times, until she’s dizzy and stumbling out of the kitchen. She puts the honor jar up and finds herself behind her trailer.

It’s less than a minute before he finds her because of course, he finds her. He’s the Finder. It’s what he does.

He apologizes again and Willa is trying to be angry, trying to boil over like she would have a month ago, or be apathetic like she would have been six months ago, but instead she is just scared and sad and missing Walter even though he’s right there.

It’s that thought that makes her glare at him. She stands up and shouts, shouts that he can’t just disappear without a word and come back again without a word. Shouts that it isn’t fair.

Shouts that she hates him and storms away.

She doesn’t glance back, but if she did, she would have seen a blank look on Walter’s face, like he’s lost for the first time.

She thinks about leaving for good, hitchhiking to Texas or Kansas or some other godforsaken place.

She spends ten minutes chewing her lip to pieces before she realizes that she never even spared a thought for returning to the family.

So she does something radical, maybe even stupid.

She goes to her PO’s office and spills the whole story. She admits that she wants to run away, admits that she doesn’t know what to do, and for the first time ever, admits that she needs help.

At the end, the woman gives her a gentle look. Willa thinks it’s the closest she can get to a smile, and nods when she’s told to go home. _Talk to them,_ she says, like it’s easy.

She’s offered a ride back home, but Willa declines with the excuse of needing time to think. The PO’s gaze hardens a little, eyeing her suspiciously, but when she takes in the young girls weary and anxious posture, she acquiesces and Willa walks away.

Willa wanders home, ducking in and out of stores, watching people with the loving families and suppressing the urge to snag that rich guy's wallet even though he was hitting on his waitress. Instead, she gives the poor girl a sympathetic look and continues on her way.

It’s dark when she gets there, callouses throbbing and head full of cotton. She has the thought to let Leo know she’s okay, but she knows it would wake Walter, and she’s too tired to have that conversation tonight, so she instead collapses in bed and sleeps until morning.

Willa wakes up reluctantly, smothered in cozy blankets and a blinding need to put off this conversation.

But she eventually gets hungry and does actually have to y’know, work occasionally, so she gets out of bed and drags herself into the Ends of the Earth.

Leo looks relieved to see her and wraps her in another hug like he’s trying to hold her together before calling Isabel and telling her that Willa is home again.

He doesn’t call Walter and doesn’t mention him at all.

It turns her stomach with anxiety, but she works hard for the next couple hours and lets it fall to the wayside.

It’s only after she gets off work that Walter finds her. He says the dreaded words — we need to talk. She presses her lips together and nods.

Willa trails after Walter until they get to, of all places, Walter’s vault. They sit on the dusty ground between two overcrowded shelves and Walter hands her something.

It’s a binder with a bunch of papers in it, but the first one steals her breath.

She doesn’t get a spare moment to recover before Walter launches into an explanation.

“I never thought I would have kids. Before, I was too serious and boring and just never really wanted them. And after... I’m crazy.” Willa shakes her head. “Yes, I am. We all know it. And we’re all mostly okay with it, but this isn’t an environment where a child can grow in a healthy manner. So kids have always been off the table. But then, Leo got you. Or, whatever. But we ended up with a kid, and I’ve started to like her company more. And we weren’t really raising you, or at least, I couldn’t mess her up because she came that way. Prepackaged with “damaged” stamped in red, bold letters, just like me. So Leo set on this journey to make this kid better, but I didn’t want to make her better. I liked her. And then, one morning, she used some Walter math and Walter thinking and found something before me, and I knew, just like that, that I’d had a kid. That she was mine.”

Walter looks at her like he expects her to understand what he’s saying, but she doesn’t, just turns ‘she was mine’ around and around her head until it’s meaningless. She shakes her head again, lost.

“Willa, I disappeared so... so I could convince a couple people that this needed to happen.” He gestures at the first page in the binder. “It isn’t signed yet, but if you wanted it... It could be official. Right now.” He brandishes a pen. “Leo and Isabel and I, we love you. You’re our family, more than anyone else.” He pauses for a moment, letting it sink in. “So, what do you say?”

Willa looks at the adoption papers, looks at the two names printed in little black letters, looks at WALTER SHERMAN and LEO KNOX and nods, once, twice, three times, until she’s dizzy and stumbling out of the vault, clutching the binder and Walter’s hand and dragging him to find Leo, who wraps her in another hug and let's tears drip into his shirt.

The men sign with steady hands and Willa goes to bed that night excited about her life.

She wakes up the next morning, and it turns out that not much has changed.

**Author's Note:**

> Walter and Leo are basically platonic soul mates.
> 
> I saw this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtxYPoSDm-Q) and couldn't resist.


End file.
